


I Woke Up Sunday to a Bloodshot Sky

by reversustenebris



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Five finds small comforts in the apocalypse, Five gets back home a lot earlier than he does in canon, Fix-it fic, i guess, i just wondered what he did for so long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 02:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18160313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reversustenebris/pseuds/reversustenebris
Summary: After Five finds himself in the apocalypse, he begins finding small comforts in anything he deems worthy.God, he feels so childish.





	I Woke Up Sunday to a Bloodshot Sky

It takes Five a few minutes to get himself stuck in the apocalypse, but it takes him three days to bury his siblings.

He sits on the broken front step of the Academy, staring at everything but their bodies as he cries until he can’t cry anymore, trying again and again to go back, but it never works. By the time he stands up to avoid falling asleep upright, he has a thin layer of ash dusted over his body, and he rubs it away from his red eyes as he begins heaving away rubble. The back lawn of the Academy is covered in ash and the grass has already been long dead, but it’s good enough, and he spends two days digging holes and carefully lowering his siblings into them, looking away as he shuts their eyes. He digs six holes, but two of them remain unfilled, and he wonders if he just couldn't find them or if they were just never there. He wonders if maybe he should lay himself down in one of those holes and never get back out.

He dreams of someday getting back to his family and that’s what gets him walking. He raids the kitchen first, grabbing canned goods and knives and anything he can justify taking with him. He finds an old wagon, one that Pogo must have used for gardening tools, and he fills it up with everything he can carry, going as far as raiding his siblings closets for anything clean or warm. The fire around him may be hot, but he knows the ash blocking the sun isn’t going to be doing him any favors.

The closets fascinate him. No longer do they hold their neatly pressed uniforms. He finds the comfiest coats in Klaus’ closet, and he finds things that suspiciously fit him in Ben’s, and the opposite in Luther’s, clothes that are so big they are sliding off his shoulders. Vanya’s closet is completely empty.

When his wagon is sufficiently full, he starts to walk. Everything aches, though less so now that he’s finally eaten something, and he stops to rest inside some department store that is miraculously still mostly in one piece. And then he sleeps, piled on dusty clothes in the darkest corner he could find. He sleeps for what feels like weeks, and when he finally wakes up, his dreary eyes settle on a mannequin a few aisles away and he moves his pile over there, so desperate for something vaguely human that he’ll settle for anything.

When he finally wheels his wagon out of the store and further down the street, the mannequin is resting in the back, an umbrella he found carefully balanced to rest over its head.

\---

Five has made loops around the city for a few days when he reluctantly decides he needs a base camp. He briefly considers the Academy before shooting down that idea. Reminds him too much of the things he no longer has, and he knows all he’ll be able to see are the four neat piles of dirt lined up in the back garden.

He finds the library instead, nestled between a coffee shop and an old sporting gear store. It’s a prime location, and after creating a place to settle in the cozy back room of the coffee shop, he starts to investigate the library. Most of the books burned, but most of the bottom floor is still around, and he tries to find anything he thinks could bring him back. 

Instead, shoved near the back of the shelf, he finds a book with a very familiar girl on the cover. He abandons his previous search, curling up in a charred chair in the coffee shop and reading straight through the book. He skims through the first four chapters, skips the fifth, and tears he thought he no longer possessed threaten to spill over when reading the sixth. 

He never lets go of that book. He can only imagine what it did to the family, but to him, it’s an update on everything he missed. It’s better than nothing.

He cries over the pages many a time, and he uses the margins to write down everything he thinks about, from little quirks of his siblings to equations he think could just maybe get him home.

He looks up from the worn pages and stares at the mannequin, balanced on the back shelf of the coffee shop, almost hoping for some kind of response.

Nothing happens, of course.

\---

He’s in the apocalypse for over a year when he finds the untouched coffee beans, shoved in boxes on high shelves he could never reach. He is grateful for the energy, though the bitter taste of the black coffee never fails to leave him with a sour face. 

At the very least, the coffee gives him this sense of comfort, of routine that he hasn’t known since he ran away from the kitchen table over a year ago. He makes a coffee every morning, investigates the buildings near his camp, and then settles in the ruins of the library, using chalk he found in the high school a few blocks over to scratch lines of equations and ideas on the cracked walls. 

He’s muttering to himself when he hears someone respond, and all he can find is the mannequin. Maybe it’s the caffeine, maybe it’s the isolation, maybe Five has always been this way, but Five talks back.

\---

He’s in the apocalypse for over five years when he finds the book of old children’s experiments. He’s searching for a view of his surroundings, as the ash has begun to clear from the sky, resulting in what almost feels like a semblance of spring. He teleports higher and higher up the ruins of the library, careful to balance his weight as not to destroy the floor beneath him. On the top floor that’s still standing, he finds a few books untouched from the mostly missing children’s sections. Most of the books are childish and meaningless, though he vaguely remembers Grace reading a few of them to him and his siblings many years ago. But he’s an (almost) adult now, so, naturally, he picks up the book of science experiments.

A majority of the experiments are cheesy and useless, teaching the most basic scientific principles that he knows by heart now. However, one of them catches his eye, and has him teleporting down the freshly growing grass below, beginning the walk a few blocks over to the record store he and his siblings used to visit.

He uses the school supplies he stole to tape the first intact record he finds to a pencil, using a needle and a cone of paper to simulate the steady needle of a record player. The sound is scratchy and skips relentlessly, but he still hears the poppy beats of a song that he knows Allison loved to play during free time on the weekends. 

He remembers tapping a foot to this song as he stands behind the kitchen counter with Vanya, making their fourth peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich as they snicker at Klaus skirmishing with Diego over the dumb thing of the week. He remembers the six of them singing along to it with cracking voices as they head to a mission, screaming the words between giggles before they’re shushed by their father.

He feels his face warm up as tears begin to roll down his cheeks for the first time in what has to be three years until his chest is heaving with sobs as he feels the strong emotions he thought he left behind with his family and his childhood. He’s sniffling and clutching the record to his chest and wiping away the ever-flowing tears when he feels his ears pop and hear an incessant crackling, blue light drowning his vision as he starts to feel like his limbs are being torn apart.

And then his eyes shoot open again, his head feeling heavy with disorientation and the biggest headache of his life, and he scrambles to his feet. The record is gone from his hands, and he looks up from his empty, calloused palms to see a towering mansion, familiar umbrella insignia branded on every flat surface. He runs to the door, exhaustion forgotten, and he warps right through the wall, no time to bother knocking. 

Before he can even take in his surroundings, he’s tackled in a hug by a Vanya who doesn’t look much different than when he left. He realizes that he looks exactly the same as how he did the day he ran away, and he starts to chalk that up to improper calculations when he’s snapped back into reality by a shout.

“Five is home!” He hears Klaus shriek from the doorway, and all of his siblings stampede into the room, smothering him in a hug he begins to laugh for the first time in forever. 

Five scoffs lightly. “Like you even missed me,” he says, though his voice starts to crack. He feels his siblings start to laugh as they look up at him with appalled expressions, and the pile of seven doesn’t move from the floor until Pogo nudges them up, giving Five a smile he’s never seen the likes of before.

“Welcome home,” Pogo says as Five and his siblings shove themselves to their feet, still overtaken by joy and scattered laughs of bewilderment.

**Author's Note:**

> It's never stated exactly, but Five is in the apocalypse for around five and a half years, and he teleports back to around six months after he ran away.


End file.
